Russia to sign gas pipeline deal

Senior officials from the Balkans and southern Europe are in the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi to sign agreements on a new gas pipeline.
South Stream, when built, will deliver gas from Central Asia and Russia to Italy through the Balkans.
The project will reduce Russia's dependence on Ukraine as a transit route, and bolster Russia's position as the region's major energy supplier.
But it has been beset by questions over its financial and technical viability.
Rival pipelines
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi, and top energy officials from Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia, will together negotiate joint ventures to construct and operate South Stream at a meeting in Sochi on Friday.
The Russian state gas company, Gazprom, wants to have the pipeline up and running by 2015.
It will deliver at least 30bn cubic metres of gas a year from Russia, across the bed of the Black Sea to Bulgaria before splitting into a southern branch leading to Greece, and a northern branch into Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Italy.
Technical and commercial assessments are already well advanced.
The prize for Russia in building South Stream is to lessen its dependence on the existing pipelines carrying Russian gas to Europe, which run across neighbouring Ukraine and Belarus.
Russia has had disputes with both countries over transit to European customers, a quarter of whose gas needs it supplies.
South Stream is a rival project to another, future pipeline proposed by the European Union and backed by the United States.
Known as Nabucco, it would deliver gas from Central Asia to Europe via Turkey, avoiding Russia and Ukraine as transit routes altogether.
Nabucco has been pushed by the EU as part of its long-term strategy to reduce dependence on Russian gas.
However, there are serious doubts over Nabucco's viability, since only one-fifth of the gas supply needed to run it has been guaranteed by the Central Asian exporters.
Russia is taking advantage of this - and the divisions within the EU over energy strategy - to get South Stream in place.
Moscow says it will make deliveries of gas to Europe more reliable, and more stable, than ever before.